This case has been all over our news this past week. This sick fucker in Purcell, Oklahoma killed and raped a 10 year old neighbor girl with the iintention of eating her later in some cannablistic fantasy. There was a similar case in Tulsa a week or so ago, also a 10 year old, kidnapped, raped and killed in some ritualistic fashion too gruesome for the police to release to the public. Quoting a police spokesperson, "It was as bad as anything in any horror movie."

__________________Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields

I hope Gerry Boyle (whose law offices are about 200 feet from my apartment) corrects that reporter for referring to his former client, Jeff Dahmer, as a cannibal. The evidence showed that Dahmer only tasted one bicep.

This case has been all over our news this past week. This sick fucker in Purcell, Oklahoma killed and raped a 10 year old neighbor girl with the iintention of eating her later in some cannablistic fantasy.

There's certainly been an epidemic of "true crime" television shows and books since the early '80s.

Joel Best's More Damned Lies and Statistics begins with a 2001 quote from Dan Rather, that school shootings in America were "an epidemic". Best consults data that show that the average number of violent deaths at schools per year had declined consistently over the previous ten years. The real epidemic was in the reportage, with every incident becoming national news as the big cable companies realized they could make a buck off the fear and anger of the credulous.

I have been following true crime cases/trials since the early 80's I would say there have been more on average in the last 5 years than ever.

You didn't have the internet in the early 80s. Many small town cases would never have made the light of day in big city press before the interconnectness that the world wide web has brought. I'm not sure there's actually been an increase, at least one that exceeds the rate of growth of the population. Since the 1950s? Yeah. Since the 1970s? Nah.

Let me add, I grew up in a relatively small town in the Texas Panhandle, one pretty typical of the era. When I was in high school in the early 70s, we were evacuated from the school building from 3 to 6 times a year due to bomb threats, in one case they actually found a bomb.

As for child killings, one I can think of that nobody heard of on a national basis. In 1978, a mother killed her child in a small town's Walmart parking lot by stuffing papertowels in her throat, dumped her body a couple miles out of town, then went back into the Walmart saying her daughter had been kidnapped. A frantic search ensued. The girl's body was found later that day. The mother confessed that same evening. Horrible? Yes. Widely known? No.

__________________Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields

Well, as I am a bit younger than you the first 'realtime' case to inspire me was Adam Walsh. Prior to that I was reading everything I could get my hands on about the Linburgh Baby Kidnapping.

You might say that crime is not worse, coverage is better. I think it would be difficult to calculate either way.

Many of todays crimes are perpertrated by individuals who use the internet as a tool to reach their victims. They didn't have that luxury before recent years. I truly feel that crimes against children in particular are up, as are drug/gang crimes compared to earlier decades.

Don't get me wrong, national statistics do show a marked increase in crime between the 1950s and the 1970s, but an overall decrease in all crimes since the 70s. There has been an uptick in violent crime in some metropolitan locales in the last couple of years for reasons not readily apparent. My take on it is that the economy isn't as rosy as some would like to believe.

__________________Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields

The mismatch between gut feelings based on channel-surfing, on one hand, and the actual data on the other is playing out in Canada right now. The current Conservative party minority government is playing to people's media-driven fear that violent crime is up, even though the statistics do not support this in any clear way.

In more specific terms, the absolute number of crimes in the Toronto area, plus the fact that these tend to be reported nationwide by a Torontocentric media, seem to contribute to the belief in rural areas that violence, and gun violence in particular, is an urban Ontario phenomenon. Yet Saskatchewan, Yukon, Nunavut, the NWT -- these have the highest murder rates in the country. Alberta, home of responsible long-gun-owners outraged at gun controls that simply must be aimed at curbing urban gunplay, has a substantially higher homicide rate than Ontario.

But the national media tells people living in these regions that violence is a large and growing problem of urban Ontario. People believe and vote accordingly.

* J.C. Watts is an Oklahoman that played several seasons for the Ottawa Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League. Aside from being a former Republican Congressman, he qualifies as a dumbass for having referred to a bomb in his luggage at a U.S. airport in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Considering the Purcell cannibal case, probably very bad timing, some dumbass in Bray, OK posted a sign in his yard offering $1000 for a virgin bride between 12 and 24 years old. The new sign put after the original one was stolen also notes what he doesn't want. He's not interested in "a pig-worshipping, heathen, white-supremacist wife". So, all you pig-worshipping heathen white supremacists virgins between the ages of 12 and 24 need not apply.

__________________Sleep - the most beautiful experience in life - except drink.--W.C. Fields

According to the stats you posted the trend for murdered children is on the decrease (true) however, this stat is based on the number of bodies found and the assumption that the thousands suspected runaways are indeed runaways.

What if they are not? what if they are actually murder victims? or living as a sex slave somewhere, or living with someone who has abducted them? (some kids are so young when abducted, they don't remember their real families)

If the annual murdered child numbers drop significantly year by year there is still a huge unknown factor with the area of suspected runaways. Who knows for sure what happened to these children to come up with accurate stats? Not to mention the number of known abductions where no body has been found. (not included in stats)

A high risk group of children are 11-17 years of age. Children of this age are starting to get out more on their own - the are often assumed as runaways because of problems at home or in school. With no direct evidence explaining their disappearance they are simply classed as runaways, but thousands never turn up.

**Between 1.3 and 2.8 million runaways live in the streets of America.

1.3 - 2.8? IMO Chances are, some from this group may not be runaways at all or due to the extremely vulnerability of this group have later become the victims of child sex predators. This is just my opinion, no stats. What a perfect group of kids to prey on, a predator's dream.

***The sexual victimization of children is overwhelming in magnitude yet largely unrecognized and underreported.

Child murder and/or violent assault could well be at epidemic levels and we are unaware of it. I admit that it could just be better coverage and the fact that I am constantly reading & actively seeking information about crimes against children. (I rarely watch Televison) Lets put it this way, I hope that is the case, I would be happy to be wrong on this.

* from missingkids.com
** from the US Government Accounting Office
*** from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

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About runaways & homeless youth - some disturbing stats I came across today